Influences
Nowadays many families have been using Modern Hebrew as the native language for three generations. The main generational differences are in the vocabulary - a difference which is apparent in many spoken languages.
Modern Hebrew has been developing in a multi-lingual environment. Half of Modern Israeli Hebrew speakers are not native speakers; furthermore, native speakers of Modern Hebrew usually learn at least one foreign language. In this situation, Modern Hebrew is affected intensively by many foreign languages - through the years Modern Israeli Hebrew has borrowed many words from Aramaic, Yiddish, Ladino, Arabic (mainly spoken Judeo-Arabic and various Levantine Arabic dialects), German, Latin, Greek, Polish, Russian, English and other languages.
According to the Academy of the Hebrew Language, in the 1880s (the time of the beginning of the Zionist movement and the Hebrew revival) there were mainly three groups of Hebrew regional accents: Ashkenazi (Eastern European) and Sephardi (Spanish/Portuguese/Italian), and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) both largely used by Israelis of Iraqi, Moroccan, Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian, and Yemeni heritage. Over time features of these systems of pronunciation merged, forming a Koiné language, and today variation in pronunciation is less dramatic.
Read more about this topic: Modern Hebrew
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Do not seek anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.”
—Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)